A spiritualist, stockbroker and journalist by profession, Woodhull ran to be president of the United States 48 years before her countrywomen even had the right to vote, espousing what she called “free love” — the right of women to divorce and marry as readily as men could.

The Equal Rights Party candidate did not fare well at the polls, failing to win a single electoral-college vote.

Hillary Clinton has just achieved what Woodhull could only have fantasized about in 1872, becoming the first woman ever to clinch the presidential nomination of one of the States’ two major parties. It only took another 144 years.

But that historic moment — arguably as meaningful as the first black person climbing to the same heights in 2008 — came and went this past week with barely an upturned eyebrow.

U.S. media outlets gave relatively little play to the gender milestone, Clinton’s Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, refused to even admit he was beaten — let alone applaud an achievement more than two centuries in the making — and Donald Trump continued to rule the news cycle.

So why are Americans so blasé about the landmark, a first in 240 years of what they are fond of calling the world’s greatest democracy?

The answers, analysts suggest, lie in the country’s long familiarity with Clinton herself, outright dislike or distrust of the 68-year-old politician in some quarters, and a surprising phenomenon: young women who no longer see their gender as an obstacle in life, and aren’t so wowed by a female becoming a major presidential nominee for the first time.

“Millennials, or women under 40 even, didn’t grow up in a world where they think in terms of sexism,” says Richard Fox, a political scientist at California’s Loyola Marymount University who has studied women in politics for two decades. “The young women, they do not give a lick about her being a woman. It just doesn’t mean anything to them.”

Clinton herself, after playing down her role as a female pioneer through much of the Democratic nomination battle, certainly did not let the moment pass unmarked.

Her victory speech after winning the California and other primaries Tuesday was launched by a video that featured clips of her own words interspersed with images from the women’s rights movement — a movement Woodhull helped start.

“Tonight caps an amazing journey — a long, long journey,” Clinton said. “We all owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you.”

But Sanders, whose remarkable campaign for the Democratic nomination seemed finally to have met its Waterloo, made only glancing mention of his opponent’s “victories,” while vowing to fight on until the party’s July convention.

His defiance, and what looked like the official start of direct hostilities between Clinton and Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, dominated news coverage of the night. Though some media highlighted gender history in the making, the influential New York Times, for one, emphasized other angles.

The coverage contrasted starkly with Barack Obama’s capture of the Democratic nomination, and then the presidency itself in 2008, both widely hailed as long-overdue landmarks for American society.

Clinton’s achievement was undoubtedly overshadowed by her own persona, forged during 25 years in the national spotlight, initially as husband Bill’s First Lady, then U.S. senator, presidential candidate, Obama’s secretary of state and — again — presidential candidate.

“The Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, have been on the front page every day for a quarter of a century,” notes Jennifer Lawless, a professor and director of the Women and Politics Institute at Washington’s American University. “So whatever she does, it’s hard to frame it as new, we’re so accustomed to it.”

Obama, on the other hand, was a fresh face, bursting onto the national radar barely four years before he ran for president.

Of course, familiarity for some Americans — plus issues like Clinton’s private email account while secretary of state and her aura of career politician — has bred contempt as well as nonchalance. Polls show her unfavourable rating hovering above 50%, surpassed only by the dislike voters harbour for Trump.

The shrug of the shoulders that met Clinton’s achievement this week seems at least partly a product of how a certain generation of women views her candidacy.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

Sanders managed to capture the majority of female voters 18-34 throughout the primaries. And when former secretary of state Madeleine Albright used colourful language to urge support for Clinton — telling a rally audience “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other” — she faced a harsh backlash from many female voters.

Older women may view Clinton as an emblem of their own struggles to succeed in a male-dominated world. Younger ones have already witnessed significant gains for women in politics — Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin were both presidential running mates, three women have served as secretary of state, several as state governors — and don’t feel their gender needs to prove itself by getting to the White House this particular year, said Kelly Dittmar, a political scientist at Rutgers University and its Center for American Women and Politics.

“It does create a sense of less urgency than I think we see among some older women who were on the front lines for the fight for gender equality,” she said. “(Younger female voters) believe a woman will be president in their lifetime. They just don’t agree that it has to be this woman.”

Lawless argues that as Clinton solidifies her grip on the nomination, Americans will indeed recognize it as “probably the most important moment having to deal with women in politics in contemporary times.”

But she acknowledged that many women unimpressed by the Democratic flag-bearer are content to wait.

“Younger women can look ahead and say ‘There’s going to be plenty of other elections, plenty of female candidates,’ ” said the political scientist. “ ‘If we don’t do it this time, we have a lot of other opportunities.’ ”

And yet, despite the successes of some female politicians and America’s place as a cradle of the feminist movement, its objective record is hardly exemplary.

The U.S. ranks 97th in the world for the portion of national legislature seats filled by women — just 19% compared with No. 1 Rwanda’s 63%, and No. 62 Canada’s 26%, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

That’s not because of a hostile environment for female candidates, Lawless argues. Her own analysis of recent congressional races — set out in a new book, Women on the Run — suggests they are now treated much the same as men, and have an equal chance of winning.

The problem instead is a “gender gap in political ambition”: women are just less apt to enter the ring, perhaps influenced by the perception they will be persecuted, she said.